Fraud Alerts and Identity Theft: Is This Enough? By Bernard Pragides At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Note: You have a one in ten chance of becoming the victim of identity theft this year. With this in mind, you need to make sure that you take all reasonable steps available to you to protect yourself from becoming the victim of identity theft. With this in mind, if you have detected that you may have become the victim of identity theft, one of the initial steps that you will want to take in response is to put a fraud alert on your credit reports. You will want to contact the three major credit reporting agencies and have them flag your accounts with these fraud alerts. This is very important as a first line of identity theft defense on your part. All it takes is to make that very important phone call to the credit bureaus. Do it before it is too late. Every moment is crucial.

Fraud alerts do serve a very helpful purpose when it comes to protecting you from become a victim of identity theft or becoming re-victimized by an identity theft. When you ask the credit reporting agencies to place a fraud alert on your credit reports, when an attempt is made by an identity thief to open up new credit accounts in your name, the financial institution from which the credit or loan is being sought will see the credit alert and will proceed accordingly. For example, rather than issue a new credit card to the identity thief in your name, the financial institution will put the whole process on hold until the time that it can confirm that it really is you who is seeking this extension of credit – in this case, a credit card.

Despite the definite importance of fraud alerts, these alerts simply are not enough to clean up after you have become the victim of identity theft or to protect you from becoming the victim of identity theft in the future. Fraud alerts are one weapon in your arsenal that can be a part of your overall effort at responding to and preventing identity theft. You must do everything in your power and avail of all resources to protect yourself from this very dangerous crime of Identity theft. These thieves are out there targeting innocent victims, in fact there are thousands of people who are already victims without their knowledge.

For example, if you have been the victim of identity theft, in addition to seeking and obtaining fraud alerts you absolutely must also file an appropriate police report. Moreover, you must notify each and every financial or similar type of institution or business through which you have an account. You need to make these types of individual notifications in the aftermath of becoming the victim of identity theft.

If you have not been the victim of identity theft per se, fraud alerts also represent one line of defense that can be helpful to you. But, you must maintain a vigilant and comprehensive approach to doing everything possible to protect your identity.

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